


The Illusion of Control

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: The Things That Define Us [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 12:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19085149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Sitting at the piano that night, he hadn't told his brother everything.Just enough to hurt him.





	The Illusion of Control

**Author's Note:**

> Based around that scene in season three from the ep. Amenadiel decides Lucifer is his test where Amenadiel tells Lucifer he's going to have his back.  
> Hopefully you like it. It kinda just happened.

Sitting at the piano that night, he hadn’t told his brother everything. Just enough to hurt him.  


\--- 

The soul he had told Amenadiel of had kidnapped and killed young women. 

Lucifer had asked what desire had led made him do so and the soul had responded, haltingly, “I don’t want to be alone.” 

Lucifer played the long game.  


He committed what the soul had said to memory and tortured the pitiful thing like he would have any other that he dealt with personally.  


Over time, he grew accustomed to visiting the wretched remnant of a man. When he forgot after several centuries, it surprised him as much as the soul which languished in his cell.  


It simply slipped his mind.  


(When he told Maze that, she arched a skeptical eyebrow and said nothing.)  


When he visited the man next, the man fell to his knees and begged the King of Hell not to forget him again.  


Lucifer looked at him blankly.  


(And here’s what he won’t tell Amenadiel.)  


“You are nothing to me,” Lucifer said softly. “You are worthless, begging for attention like a cringing dog, unaware that what little value you had as entertainment has vanished. You annoy me. My mercy extends no further.”  


He turned away and opened the door.  


“Please, my king, _please _\--”__  


The soul was sobbing like Lucifer hadn’t been able to make him in a thousand years.  


Lucifer stepped through the doorway, closed the door, and walked away.  


He never returned.  


\---

He doesn’t lie.  


So when he spits venomous words of hatred at Amenadiel, they’re the truth.  
They simply aren’t, as Dr. Linda is so fond of saying, the whole truth.  


In his anger he chooses the things he knows will hurt his brother the most. His tongue has always been his weapon of choice and he chooses his words carefully, sharpens and polishes the things he never intended to say out loud into razor-sharp knives.  


He directs them at Amenadiel for two reasons:  


His Father isn’t there for him to hurt in his brother’s name, for his brother’s sake;  
And it’s always worked before, whenever someone got too close.  


(Whenever someone stayed.)

__Amenadiel is looking for… acknowledgement, perhaps. A meaning and a purpose. Or maybe some way to keep his faith in Dad in the midst of all of this.  


He’s looking for that from Lucifer because he thinks it’ll prove something to Dad, get Dad’s attention.  


That means their Father is using Lucifer to torture his brother.  


That doesn’t sit well with Lucifer.  


Lucifer will realize all of that later, though.  


In the moment he reacts on vicious instinct. 

\--- 

The only one he’d ever let close enough to always have his back was Maze. And she had always been the only exception to all of his rules.  


(Chloe was too, in some ways, but she still didn’t believe the truth.)  


(Maze knew and accepted every part of him, human or angel or Devil, and never turned away.  


She was not with him now, but she would come back.  


It would always be the two of them against everyone, everything, else.  


Always.) 

\--- 

So he tries to make his brother leave, to hurt him now purposefully instead of later and accidentally. Because as much as he’s hurting the both of them right now, Lucifer knows that watching someone leave after believing they’d stay hurts worse.  


It doesn’t work.  


He doesn’t understand why. 

__Lucifer finds himself panting, gasping for air, as Amenadiel tells him he’s not going to give up on him.  


He was braced for a fight, wanted one, and now...  


His hands are shaking. He forces them to hold steady long enough to drain his glass. The elevator doors close behind Amenadiel and Lucifer hurls the glass blindly, vision blurring. 

__

__He isn’t sure who he hates more in that moment:  


His Father, for turning Amenadiel the Firstborn ( _my brother _, he thinks but does not acknowledge,) into this and for taking his own control away yet again;__  


Amenadiel, for starting the two of them down this path yet again;  


Or himself, for not being strong enough to stop either of them.  


Again. 


End file.
